State Lays Out Case Against Suspect

NEW BRITAIN — A state prosecutor argued to a jury Friday at the trial of a man accused of robbing two fast food restaurants last year that the evidence against the man was overwhelming.

In his final arguments during the trial in New Britain Superior Court, State's Attorney Scott Murphy said Vernal Morgan's claims that he wasn't involved were not credible. An eyewitness described Morgan's car, seized by police when he tried to flee on foot after the second robbery, as the getaway vehicle and that a mask and gloves inside of it were used in the incident.

Morgan, 22, is on trial in connection with robberies occurring about six weeks apart. The first occurred at a Blimpies sandwich shop on Stanley Street about 11:10 p.m. on April 11, 2001. The second holdup was at a Subway shop close to 6 p.m. on May 29.

Murphy told the jury that the testimonies of clerks at the two restaurants and a security videotape of the Blimpies robbery clearly show that Morgan committed the holdups.

Assistant State Public Defender Claud Chong said eyewitness identifications made within seconds, as these were, are notoriously unreliable because witnesses' observations regularly prove inaccurate under the stress of an armed robbery.

Chong argued that Morgan admitted to being in his car, seized by police less than an hour after the late-afternoon holdup of the Subway, but he insisted he was dropped off across Hartford Road at a Chili's restaurant before the incident.

Ten minutes after the drop off, Morgan said two other men and a woman picked him up in his car, but they never told him they had committed a robbery. Morgan did not identify any of those in the car in his testimony. Minutes after he was picked up at Chili's, he said, his car stopped near another car, dropping off the woman and one of the men.

It was minutes after the second robbery that police pursued a blue sedan owned by Morgan, described by witnesses as the getaway car, down I-84 toward West Hartford where it sped off on the Sisson Avenue exit.

Police said Morgan fled the car after it crashed into another vehicle and was captured after a foot chase of several blocks.

Soon after Morgan was captured, a clerk at the Subway, Liz Paradis, identified Morgan as one of the persons she saw driving into the restaurant parking lot without a mask minutes before the robbery. She said when he rushed into the restaurant with a mask on, she immediately recognized him as the man she saw in the blue car driving slowly in the parking lot.

The next day, city police called Holly Broderick, the Blimpies' clerk, to police headquarters where she positively identified a mug shot of Morgan as the man who robbed the restaurant. Morgan is charged with two counts each of first-degree robbery and conspiracy to commit robbery. Judge Carmen E. Espinosa will instruct the jury on the law on Monday. Then the jury will decide the case.